A plan was laid out as the Evolution crushed mankind, a plan that was right under Eden’s nose all along. And Eve is the key to everything. New Eden—mankind—they have a small chance at fixing their dismembered planet.

But it will be a reckless sprint against time and the coming Bane to retrieve the final piece to the plot. New Eden’s worst fears have become reality. The Bane are back in the city and they’re smarter and more aggressive than ever. They know where the humans are and they’re coming to finish what they’ve nearly completed.

Eve has been content with the family she’s found—Avian, West, Gabriel, Royce. But she’s about to discover she may have the one family Eve never thought she would: blood. With every odd stacked against her, all the lies and all the secrets of her origins will be exposed.

“Start
checking vehicles,” I said, racing across the street to a parking lot.
“Maybe we’ll find something with keys.”

“Eve,”
West said as we started yanking car doors open. “You know if that kid was
infected that it’s too late for Avian. He’ll get infected.”

I
shook my head, my jaw set hard. “No,” I said as I checked another
car. No keys. “There’s a chance the boy wasn’t infected. And
if it just barely happened, he won’t be able to spread the infection for a few
hours.”

But
even as I made my argument, I knew it wasn’t true. Those bodies had been
dead for days, maybe even over a week. If the kid was infected, TorBane
would be fully saturated into his system.”

“Got
it!” West shouted. He held up a pair of keys as a floor mat came tumbling
out of the truck. “Get in!”

I
hopped into the passenger seat and slammed the door shut. I tossed our
supplies in the back seat. “You don’t know how to drive,” I said, my
voice breathy.

“Today
seems like a good day to learn,” West said, shoving the key in the ignition.

The
truck clicked and sputtered. It had been a sitting, rusting dinosaur for
six years. We’d been stupid to think any of these vehicles might start.

“Come
on!” West shouted, pounding the steering wheel. He slammed one of the
pedals with his foot and suddenly it roared to life. “Yes!”

“That
there puts it into drive, I think,” I said, pointing to the stick on the side
of the driving column.

West
yanked on it and the truck jerked backwards and slammed into the vehicle behind
us.

“Okay,”
West said, shifting the stick again. “R stands for reverse. So D
for drive?”

D
was indeed for drive and we rocketed forward, clipping another vehicle as we
swung wildly out of the parking lot and onto the street.

“That
woman was touched,” I said, bracing myself as we swerved madly. “She had
probably gone out to look for food or something when a Hunter must have found
her. West, this means they’re starting to come back into the city.”

The
speedometer crept up to eighty miles an hour as we peeled back onto the
onramp. Just as we pulled onto the freeway, there was a figure ahead of
us. There was no time to stop and the truck plowed right into it.

The
mechanical body broke right in half, completely cybernetic by this time.
The upper half of the body crashed into the windshield, shattering it.

We
both screamed as the glass burst into tiny glittering pieces and an arm dangled
between the two of us.

“Holy…”
West bellowed as the truck swerved violently back and forth and we ran over the
lower half of the body.

“Keep
driving!” I shouted. I was about to reach for the shoulders of the body,
when its hand suddenly flung out at me, and wrapped around my throat.

West
swore loudly. “It’s still alive?!”

“Keep…”
I gasped for air as West swerved in an attempt to put distance between himself
and the Bane that was somehow still attacking. “Driving!”

Wrapping
my hands around the wrist, I squeezed until the cybernetic bones crumpled and
bent and the hand let go. Plowing the heel of my hand into what was left
of where its nose should have been, its head whipped back with a sickening
crunch. The thing was instantly still.

But
still carrying active TorBane.

I
coughed violently, unbuckling my seatbelt.

“You
okay?” West asked, wild fear in his eyes as he attempted to drive
straight. He leaned as far to the left as possible, attempting to put
some space between him and the mangled Bane.

I
half stood as well as I could in the cramped space. Placing my hands on
its shoulders, I gave a good shove. The body slid forward two feet and to
the right. But one of its arms slipped down the front of the hood and
caught in the grill.

“Oh,
come on,” West said, looking at the body in disbelief.

“Keep
driving,” I repeated. I used my boot to knock out the rest of the glass
hanging around the frame of the window. Crawling up onto the dash, I
slowly worked my way out onto the hood of the truck.

As
we drove over the bumpy freeway, the arm wedged its way tighter and tighter
into the grill. Finally, I simply snapped the arm off at the elbow.
The rest of the body crashed to the ground. I tried yanking the rest of
the arm free, but it wouldn’t budge.

“Get
back in here, Eve!” West shouted. “We can have it melted down
later. Sit down before I kill you!”

An
amused chuckle worked its way through my lips as I carefully climbed back up
the hood and into the vehicle.

“Well,
this turned into an exciting day,” West said, shaking his head.

“Yeah,
I think the Bane are getting back into the city,” I said, pushing my windblown
hair back off my forehead. “That store was supposed to be fifteen miles
inside our perimeter. They’ll be getting back into the center of the city
soon. I thought I’d cleared all of them out for five hundred miles after
the beacon went off.”

“Just
another day in the world of the Evolution,” West said. “Must have been a
Sleeper that recently woke up. It could have been inactive when you
called them all out to the desert.

“For
once, could the element of time just be on our side?” I said, exasperated.

“What,”
West said, smiling at me as he swerved around a particularly large crack in the
road. “And make life simple and boring?”

Keary Taylor grew up along the foothills of the Rocky Mountains where she started creating imaginary worlds and daring characters who always fell in love. She now resides on a tiny island in the Pacific Northwest with her husband and their two young children. She continues to have an overactive imagination that frequently keeps her up at night. She is the author of THE EDEN TRILOGY, the FALL OF ANGELS trilogy, and WHAT I DIDN'T SAY.